Scope: Interiors
Area: 330,000 SF
Photos: Shannon McGrath

Macquarie Group’s expansion in Sydney led to the need to accommodate 3,000 people in a new building. We were attracted by the challenge of working with a forward-thinking bank. Our design approach was to open up the 10-story, 330,00-square-foot building vertically and activate the atrium to showcase a transparent workplace. The Client’s decision to embrace Activity Based Working (ABW), a flexible platform for the financial business, developed by Dutch consultants Veldhoen + Company, called for mobile environments.

Working in synchronicity with Woods Bagot, as executive architect, and Fitzpatrick + Partners, as architect for the base building, we were able to create a kind of vertical Greek village of the future. Each floor was divided into 5 neighborhoods of approximately 100 people. Within the office floors, we designed Plazas with themes based on ancient collaboration typologies: the dining table, the library, the garden, the tree house, the playroom, and the coffee house.

One Shelley Street exceeds the highest levels of Green Star or LEED efficiency, benefiting from radical technologies like harbor water cooling, chilled beams and zone controlled lighting. A large percentage of furniture was adapted and re-used from their previous space, but most significantly, ABW working allows a huge saving in resource efficiency, real estate and operating costs.